Review debunks mummy's curse

There's no evidence to support the existence of a mummy's curse haunting King Tut's tomb, a researchers says.

The curse was thought to cause the premature death of those who attended the opening of the tomb in 1923. British archeologist Howard Carter granted The Times of London exclusive rights to report on his expedition, leaving rival newspaper reporters scrambling for a story.

The death of expedition financer Lord Carnarvon, about six weeks after the door was opened, gave journalists the story they were looking for.

Media even reported Carnarvon's three-legged dog howled and had died at the same time as his master.

A review of Carter's diaries has revealed 44 Westerners were in Egypt at the time, and 25 of them were potentially exposed to the curse.

Mark Nelson, an epidemiology and preventive medicine scholar at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia conducted the study.

• FROM OCT. 1, 2002: King Tut unmasked by reconstruction

But if you dig deeper, the age difference disappears.

"If you take into account the differences in age and the differences in gender balance, then there was no statistical significant difference between the two groups," Nelson told CBC Radio's As It Happens.

He concluded there's no evidence to support the existence of a curse.

"Perhaps finally (the curse), like the tragic boy king Tutankhamen, may be put to rest," Nelson wrote in the Christmas issue of the British Medical Journal.